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Person

Thomas Young

Thomas Young, wearing a dark coat with a white cravat and ornate gold brooches, stands against a dark background.

English physician, physicist, and Egyptologist (1773–1829) who in 1801 demonstrated the interference of light passing through two slits, providing the strongest argument for the wave theory of light against Newton's corpuscular picture. Young also helped decipher the Rosetta Stone, formulated a measure of material stiffness still called Young's modulus, and made early contributions to colour vision.

Mentioned in 3 articles